About Wanderings

Each week I will post my current syndicated newspaper column that focuses upon social issues, the media, pop culture and whatever might be interesting that week. During the week, I'll also post comments (a few words to a few paragraphs) about issues in the news. These are informal postings. Check out http://www.facebook.com/walterbrasch And, please go to http://www.greeleyandstone.com/ to learn about my latest book.

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Insanity Extends Beyond the Shooters

by Walter Brasch

During this past week, in Scranton, Pa., a 16-year old put two
bullets into the head of a taxi driver and then stole about $500 earned by the
cabbie that evening.

The teen, who showed no remorse when arrested a few hours
later, mumbled a few words about his reasons. He said he murdered the cabbie “’Cause that’s what I do to people that don’t listen.”
The teen thought the cabbie was taking too long to get him to his destination. The
driver was a 47-year-old man with a wife and two children. The gun was an unlicensed 9-mm.

A few days later, in Payson, Ariz., a
three-year-old boy found a loaded semi-automatic gun in the apartment of family
friend, began playing with it, and accidentally killed his 18-month-old
brother. Police recovered several other weapons from the apartment.

In Homestead, Fla., a 28-year-old man, who
admitted he was drinking and using cocaine, was showing off an AK-47 at a
picnic. His six-year-old nephew picked up the gun when no one was watching,
played with it, and accidentally killed his own grandfather.

In Logan County, Okla., a Sheriff’s deputy
killed a family dog. The homeowner says she had politely asked the deputy not
to come onto her property because she didn’t know how her two dogs would react.
The deputy, who had no warrant, opened the gate and was met by one of the two
dogs, who began sniffing the deputy. Witnesses say the deputy then pulled his
gun, waved it at two children, and then killed the dog.

In Isla Vista, Calif., a 22-year-old man
with a history of mental problems, stabbed his three roommates, and then drove
near the campus of the University of California at Santa Barbara. In about 10
minutes, he murdered three more students and wounded 13 more before committing
suicide. Police say the killer had three
9 mm. weapons and about 400 rounds of ammunition, all of it purchased legally.

The father of one of those killed, to a
standing cheering crowd of 20,000 at a memorial service, called for an end of
gun violence. “How many more people are going to have to die in this situation
before the problem gets solved?” he demanded.
He accused politicians of having “done nothing” to stop the mass
murders. He had previously told journalist Anderson Cooper that politicians had
called him to express their sympathies.
But the father said he told the politicians, “Don’t tell me you’re sorry
about my son’s death until you do something.” At the football stadium, the
father, who had carefully prepared his speech, declared his son’s murder, and
those of five other students, and those of thousands a year who were killed by gunfire,
“died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA.” The grieving
father said, “Too many people have died, and there should be not one more.” The
crowd picked up on his words, and began chanting, “Not one more!”

More than 2,300 miles to the East, Samuel
Wurzelbacher, forever known as “Joe the Plumber” after he became the darling of
the extreme right wing during the 2008 presidential campaign, again crawled out
of a hole to defend what he believed was his God-given right to defend gun rights.
In an open letter, he pretended to be sympathetic to the families of those
murdered, but declared, “Your dead kids don't trump
my Constitutional rights.” With mangled grammar, he then told a grieving
nation, “The proliferation of guns, lobbyists, politicians,
etc.; will be exploited by gun-grab extremists as are all tragedies involving
gun violence and the mentally ill by the anti-Second Amendment Left.”

After
the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012, that left 26 dead, including 20
children between the ages of six and eight, America seemed determined to
finally act against irresponsible purchase and ownership of guns. But, politicians
with spines of Jello went into the fetal position before the financially-lucrative
NRA support, and refused to improve laws about background checks for gun sales,
whether from a dealer, at a gun show, from companies that advertise in any of
several dozen gun magazines, or on the Internet; they refused to ban assault
weapons; and they refused to restrict the size of gun magazines.

The Georgia
legislature is the latest to flex its steroid-driven brain, and pass a law that
allows people to carry guns wherever they want. That would include bars. (Whatever could go wrong in a roomful of
liquor, booze, and firearms?) Colleges. (Imagine
18-year-olds upset with their roommates or the profs who just gave them lower
grades than they thought they deserved?)And churches. (Obviously, no one thought to ask ‘What
Would Jesus Do?' It shouldn’t take anyone with even one point of an IQ to figure
out what the man Christians know as the Prince of Peace would think about firearms
in houses of worship.)

Gun-toting
extremists picketed several private-enterprise restaurant chains that restrict patrons from
carrying weapons. These whackadoodles are the same ones who claim that private
enterprise is more important than government, but acknowledge private rights
only if it agrees with their own distorted logic.

A CBS poll revealed about 85 percent of all
Americans, including gun owners, support federal legislation to require
thorough background checks on all persons planning to buy a gun. Apparently,
the NRA leadership, far more reactionary than most of its members, believes
hunters and those protecting their houses from burglars or the “jack-booted
thugs” the NRA leadership once called federal law enforcement agents, need military-style
assault weapons with a 100-round magazines.

Just
as politicians crave NRA money, the NRA knows it has millions of dollars of
funding from gun manufacturers. Last year, American gun manufacturers earned
about $12.6 billion from the sale of more than 5.5 million firearms, about half
of them handguns. About 60 percent of the sales went to civilians, according to
the Department of Justice. Another three million guns were imported. There are
more than 310 million firearms in civilian possession, according to the FBI.
The United States has one of the highest rates for gun violence in the world.

Joe the Plumber and NRA executive director Wayne LaPierre, significant
blemishes upon the Constitution and the principles of the Judeo-Christian
philosophy, will continue to get media exposure. Their names will continue to
be known. Their paranoid rants will continue to draw praise from hundreds of
thousands who don’t know much about the Constitution, and believe President
Obama—whom they know to be a Kenyan socialist Muslim—is secretly plotting to
seize every one of their guns and turn the United States into a dictatorship.

Within a few weeks, as other murders are
committed, we will forget the names of those killed this past week. Their names will no longer be important; how
they were killed will no longer matter. But before we develop mass amnesia, and
begin to believe that murder is just a part of the American culture, let’s take
a few moments to remember. In Scranton, the 47-year-old cabbie, a mechanic who
had slightly more than a month earlier changed jobs, is Vincent Darbenzio. The
grandfather in Florida is Juan Manuel Martinez Sr. The dog was named Charlie. In Isla Vista, the students
killed were George Chen, 19 years old; Cheng Hong, 20; Katerine Cooper, 22;
Christopher Michaels-Martinez, 20; Weihan Wang, 20; and Veronika Weiss, 19.
(Chris’s father, Richard, is the one who publicly called out politicians and
the NRA.)

During the week they and the 18-month-old
in Arizona died, there were about 200 more deaths from firearms, according to the
FBI. Few of those deaths made anything more than a two-column newspaper
headline, the story usually confined just to local news. During this year, more
than 32,000 will be killed by firearms; about 2,000 will be children.

The NRA leadership and the few extremists
it protects mouth the motto of the gun culture—“guns don’t kill people, people
kill people.” They screech the paranoid fear that all guns will be registered
and then confiscated. These juveniles trapped in the bodies of adults
ignorantly bleat that if they or their children had been armed, the only one
killed would be the person who committed the mass shootings. What they don’t
acknowledge is that even the better-trained, better-armed police were unable to
kill the shooter. They say there needs to be better laws against those with
mental illnesses having guns. That part is true. But also true is that the lack
of sane gun laws, which protect all people—including gun owners—is because the
insanity is not just those who commit murder, but many who wrap themselves in
the Second Amendment, ignorantly proclaiming, with no legal knowledge, they
have a right to keep whatever arms and ammunition they want, and any gun law
violates whatever they think is their ego-inflated divine inspiration.

[Dr.
Brasch is author of 20 books; the latest ones are Fracking Pennsylvania and Collateral
Damage in the Marcellus Shale. He is also a semi-active trap shooter.]

1 comment:

it may be helpful to know what the murder rates are with guns in other countries where gun ownership is not allowed? and if there are murders in those countries, what weapons are used? the first three people killed by the student was by "stabbing".....! it's a horrible situation.....

My latest Book. Available in Print. Updated ebook coming soon!

"Fracking Pennsylvania is a fact-based overview of the issues surrounding the natural gas industry and fracking. Although it focuses upon the Marcellus Shale, it looks at cases and issues in other parts of the country. The book is not meant to be a comprehensive analysis of the science and engineering of the process to extract natural gas nor an extensive discussion of the economic, health, environmental, and political issues. It is meant as a basic reference to acquaint people with the issues, with the hope they will dig deeper into areas that directly concern them and rally their friends and neighbors to help protect the health and environment of the people, wildlife, and natural vegetation."

About Me

Walter M. Brasch. I'm a journalist, a writer who looks at society and tries to
understand, then analyze and explain its many complex parts as they
relate to each other to help people better understand their own lives
and what's both necessary and important to their lives.
My weekly column appears in 30+ print newspapers and several dozen
online newspapers. I also write books, often fusing social issues and
history.
I was a newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, and a
writer-producer for multi-screen multimedia productions. I also retired
as a professor of mass communications.